The War of The Worlds
by darklight ascendant
Summary: An old evil has arisen to take over the worlds, and it's up to Arty to find an ancient artifact to stop it. But is he up to it when he's infected his entire world with illogicity? CHAP 2 UP! PG for naked fairy - it's not as bad as it sounds...wink
1. Hither the Plot Bunnies Come!

**The War Of The Worlds**

A/N: Thanks to the following people, who have declared their consent to me trampling all over their wonderful ideas by not coming over and litigating the life out of me (HINT!):

Eoin Colfer: for Artemis Fowl and gang, Holly and gang, and action-packed stories that don't fall short on character development (albeit rather stereotyped character development).

J.K. Rowling: for Lord Voldemort, Harry "WHO TURNED INTO A STUPID ANGSTY TEEN? WHO? WHO?" Potter and gang, and action-packed stories that reveal the folly of not investing enough in character development.

Stephen Baxter: for the Manifold, which sparked this off, and for Squeem. They taste good. I swear!

Will Smith: for showing the world the folly of buddy movies. Dude!

Last but not least....

Fanfiction.net!! For the world's largest repository of cliches, speling erors, grammar bloopers and bad metaphors, without which I would never have been inspired to write this. You guys are awesome; it's just that some of the writers here aren't.

OK, I'm done!

I: Hither the Plot Bunnies come!

Raindrops were falling on his head - 

_What?_

His eyes opened and he looked around in pain. This wasn't Fowl Manor! He suddenly felt the piece of canvas cloth tying his hands behind his back. He tried to get up from his kneeling position to run away, but fell flat before realizing that his feet were similarly bound. And with a start, he realized that there was nothing else on his body.

"Servant, who is this?" A sibilant voice, a blend between the whispered hiss of a serpent, the coughs of a dying old man and the murmur a radio makes when its batteries have almost turned to slush. By now Artemis' eyes had dark-adapted sufficiently to see the hobbling dark creature, and another old man, standing beside an ominous cauldron.

"I ddon't know, Masstter." The old man spoke now. "I jusstt...jusstt read the spell you wrottess...sir, the sspell to summon a boy geniuss..."

"Boy genius? I said, boy sorceror! Why did you see fit to - "

"Masstter, may I...I voice my humble oppinnion?"

"Speak wisely, or you will rue the day you were born with a tongue."

"Well, everybody knowss you are a masstter s...sorceror, Sir, so I ddidn't think you need the boy sorceror. I t...thought it betterr... to summon s...someone to m...make up for your lack of brrainss, that's - "

Artemis saw a flash, and a toad appeared where the old man had been. "And the nearest fly is 50 miles away!" the hobbling dark creature cried in spite. He turned to Artemis. Suddenly, his identity became clear to Artemis.

"Voldemort? But I thought you were the just the invention of an inferior children's fantasy author!"

"Thought? Do the sallow sparks in your cranial cavity qualify as thought?"  
Artemis had the right to feel insulted. "Well, have you ever beaten anyone in chess with three moves?"

"No sweat."

"How?"

"It's really hard for anyone to win when he's dead."

"Granted." Artemis' brain chugged furiously. How hard could it be to change the subject? He felt out of character having to think so hard, as if he was being besotted with a teenage girl at a prom. "For the record, your first impression stinks. Your voice has no proper enunciation whatsoever and your body odour is worse than that of a decaying Rafflesia."

"Well, what do I do when lightning strikes me?"

"Curl up and die. My olfactory nerves will never be the same again."

Lord Voldemort was at a loss for words. He was barely smart enough to realize it. He hastily flipped mentally through his sessions at the Hollywood Villainy In Criminal Existence (V.I.C.E.) Academy and recovered a maxim his instructors had called the "Lollypop Principle": "You say it best when you say nothing at all! Use a long and evil laugh to assert your villainy!"

So he laughed – or tried to. Rather, a sound not unlike the dying cries of a choked elephant assaulted Artemis' ears. Artemis had had enough. He stood to his (tied) feet. "Lord Voldemort, you are pathetic!"

That broke something in Lord Voldemort's demeanour. "That does it!" he cried, and stretched out his hand. "Avara Kedav - "

Artemis awoke with a gasp. He was safe and sound in Fowl Manor. His groggy mind was filled with fear – not by the dream itself, but by the fact that he could have conceived such nonsense. Crossing over into the world of Harry Potter indeed! Where could such mental pollutants be coming from?

As if an answer, he suddenly noticed a strange glow from his computer monitor. He arose and brushed the mouse to clear the screen saver. His Internet Explorer was open – how? - and in the Address field was an ominous concatenation of characters:

http:// www. fanfiction. net.

What the? - he swiveled. Something had touched his left shoulder. It had felt far too warm to be human, like a hyperactive rodent in a sauna. It couldn't be – again! He turned around again feeling that same something touch his right shoulder. Suddenly he turned one last time, and came face-to-face with the strange intruder.

It was about three-quarters his height. Its head looked the wrong shape, definitely not human or even simian, too rounded to be canine.There was a ski mask over its head, disproportionately big compared to its body, and there were two ominous masses of – _something_ – crinkled up underneath, as if it was having a bad hair day. On its torso it wore a long black trench coat, quite untidily buttoned, but beneath the trench coat a tinge of pink peeked out every now and then. And its legs – there was something about its legs that didn't seem quite right, for the black slacks it wore seemed to curve in all the wrong places, giving it the appearance of perpetually sitting on an invisible chair. Its hands weren't very apparent either. There were just stumps that ended inside the sleeves of the trench coat, looking like a baby trying on clothes for an adult. It reached out just such a trench coat sleeve to Artemis, who was standing face-to-face with it now. "Hello, Master Fowl," a husky, almost seductive voice crooned, only muffled partly by the ski mask.

"Butler!!!"

"Now, now, let's not be hasty. I come all the way here to meet you, and that's the welcome I get? Let me take off my mask first, alright? Customary proprieties." It – _she_ – pulled the ski mask off to reveal a pink face that bore some feminine attractiveness, but nevertheless belonged unmistakeably to a _bunny_. And the two masses folded underneath the mask bounded up and unfolded into two long, slender ears, the tips of with she began massaging with her "hands". With the ears, she was now a little taller than Artemis.

"What – who – are you?"

"I'm a plot bunny."


	2. The Plot Thickens

**The War Of the Worlds**

More credits:

Noordin Hassan: "Tiada logik di sini..." Thanks, man. You've put the words in our mouths to describe the state of our education.

Onwards we go!

Chapter 2: The Plot (Bunny) Thickens

"So, what exactly are you, idiotic plot bunny – whatever _that_ is – doing in my house?"

Artemis' angry tirade was interrupted by a sudden shower of sparks and crackles. He turned to see his computer covered in strange pink goo. "You've – you've short-circuited my precious computer!"

"You boys and your toys." Her voice was oddly soothing – whether seductive or sleep-inducing, he didn't care to think. (Didn't care to think? What was happening to him?) "I'm a plot bunny, thick-headed numskull. I told you already."

"But what is a plot bunny?"

"A plot bunny am I!"

"Enough with the illogicity - "

"But illogicity is exactly what I am!" She giggled; he was left wordless. "Don't you get it? - Of course you can't. Well, I'm here to take over the world."

"Well, where have I heard that before? I wonder."

"Hey! Give me some credit! Most villains just want to destroy the world! There's a fine distinction."

"Being?"

"Well, you for one will destroy the world."

"Me – what? - you've got to be - "

"It's a prophecy, git. It will come true. I didn't say it. Except I just did. Because somebody else made me say it. Who? Me, of course! Me!"

Artemis stared on incredulously. He had scaled the heights of intellectualism, learnt all about a civilization sharing his planet that no one else in the world was aware of, and had kidnapped and successfully held for ransom a creature with superior technology, healing magic, and hypnotism to boot. Yet nothing could have prepared him for an assault of illogicity. He decided to test the waters. "You're not cliched enough. Prophecies come in funny rhymes so that stupid readers can remember them when they come true at the end of the story."

"Oh really? Well:

I don't like rhymes, they take too much time!

Just let me say it this way:

You're gonna destroy the world, ok?"

"Well, let's see what gets destroyed once Butler gets here."

"Oh? Should I be scared? Then what is that pounding on the door?"

Artemis listened hard. There was a faint banging on the door. He looked at his watch and realized with a start that two hours had passed since he had called Butler. Where had the time went? "Butler! Butler, is that you?"

"There is no logic here, Artemis, and you are doomed. This room is illogically disconnected from the rest of your space-time continuum. I will complete what I have come to do. Which is what? What I have come to do, of course! Which is what? What I have..."

Artemis groaned. Anything was better than this nonsensical drivel. "Go ahead. It is inevitable, I suppose."

Shockingly, the bunny decomposed into a pile of slightly quivering pink goo on the floor. "Nuts, there goes the cool trench coat," her softening voice wailed. Artemis watched in a stark combination of horror and half-crazed curiosity as the ball of goo condensed and levitated in the air. It pinched off at the middle to form a waist, extended out to form arms and legs that quickly took on a coffee-brown tinge. A vaguely head-shaped mound nestled atop a rapidly extending neck as appendages tapered and were refined. For a moment Artemis saw the thing completely formed but unclothed. One look was enough to send him running to the door, and he shut his eyes banging his head on the antique wood in the fury of returning memories. Wings of slime emerged from the creature's back and coalesced around it, clothing its form with an LEP uniform. And Holly grinned an evil grin.

"It is just what you have longed for all this while. You illogical thing," she cooed, almost pityingly. Then she thrust her hands around his neck.

As she throttled down hard, pink gel seeped through the skin where her palms touched Artemis' neck into his flesh. It raced its way along the blood vessels, diffusing more slowly between the cells of his body, and for a moment Artemis' arteries and veins were outlined in pink like a grotesquely cute anatomical model of the circulatory system before the slower pink seepage through his flesh came and subdued their hue. It ran down along the contours of his body, and also upwards into his head, where the neurons of his brain sparked pink for a split second. His personality – his lovable sarcasm, his inimitable precociousness, his earned disrespect of authority – breathed a tortured last, replaced by a vapid sentimentality that lived purely to propel illogical plots and thoughts. The pink enveloped the white of his eyeballs and filled his head to the brim. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it finished, and the pink tinge sunk deep into his body leaving him as pale-skinned as ever.

"Holly! Holly!" Artemis turned around with a reformatted character, but the plot bunny-Holly was gone. Suddenly, the door splintered – no, exploded – into a thousand pieces, and Butler crashed in wheezing. "Artemis?"

"Butler!" Artemis squealed. "Come here and give me a hug!"

At the Hollywood V.I.C.E. Academy...

It was a secluded world far from the Nexus, but its criminal populace terrorized an entire continuum of worlds. They flashed in and out of existence at the Portal, wandering to different worlds with a thousand dastardly plans that involved torture, vengeance, global mayhem, or most frequently all three. So when an elven law enforcement officer flashed into existence in the Portal chamber, it caused much consternation amongst the exiting and entering villains. The Dementors had almost gotten round to giving her enough nightmares about human abduction to last a thousand nights when she re-coalesced into her bunny form. They let her pass with a dejected sigh. [Hey, what's wrong with Dementors being immigration officers? What's your problem? I bet it's just because they're black, isn't it? Isn't it? Racist KKK clubber!]

The bunny hurried to the central chamber. There was a portrait of a plot bunny hanging from an otherwise empty wall in a secluded corner of the arrival hall. The bunny saw the ghoul hanging in front of it that only other bunnies could see. "Good day, Nearly Hopeless Hick!"

"And good day to you. What have you been up to? Another – oh, you smell of elf. You've gotten another Artemis?"

"Actually, my first. My previous ones were flamed out of significance and existence the moment they hugged anybody."

"Well, congratulations and all the best. Oh – the password."

"I'm a plot bunny, you stupid hick!"

"Hey! Now you be polite or I'm not letting you in! What's the password?"

"I'm a plot bunny, you stupid hick!"

"That does it! I'm resigning! I've had enough of plot bunnies - "

"That was the password."

"Oh, it was? Wait. It was!" They started laughing simultaneously. "Claire, you fool! I've been hanging around you too much. Get it? Hanging!"

"Capital illogic! Haha! Get it? Capital? Hanging?"

Claire (the plot bunny) walked into the picture. At least, she would have on any other normal day. Today, instead, she smacked her nose on the canvas and fell back rubbing it with her paw. "What? Have they thickened this thing since I was here?"

"No, but look - " Hick passed a ghostly finger through her wrist with much difficulty, "- you've thickened! It is a good sign."

"Indeed! Now, can I get through the picture?"

"Just hold on." Hick swished into the picture, and for a moment the colours wilted and mellowed as the fabric frayed at the edges. "There. You should make it through now."

"Thanks! Good day, stupid hick!"

"Same to you!" But already all that was left of Claire was a tail sticking out of the picture. It slithered in, and the weft and warp of the canvas shuddered with the fraying of reality. Things were moving.


End file.
